There were 10 people in our room last night and Pam was the only woman. This was her excuse for being the last one out of bed–she wanted all the guys to leave before she got up. When she finally got out of bed around 7, only George and I were left in the room and Peter hadn’t left yet, but he was upstairs eating. I tried to tell her and George we needed to get upstairs to eat because we had to be out by 8. Neither one thought that the 8 o’clock rule was strictly enforced so they took their sweet time getting ready.
When we got upstairs, an old French woman was sweeping the hall and Peter was washing his dishes. She came in clearly exasperated with us and asked us what we wanted to drink–coffee or tea. We all said coffee. She motioned us to sit down. Then she brought us 3 finger bowls of brown water. Peter had already told us the French drink out of bowls rather than cups, so we recognized this as coffee. George tried to ask for black coffee and was unsuccessful in his attempt to get something different. After she gave us the coffee, she tossed a basket of bread with 7 heels in it and waved her hands over the basket and said “finis”. This was our first breakfast on the Camino.
We were on the road by 8:30. Peter stuck around until we were ready and walked with us down the main street until he had to turn off to catch the GR10 out to the coast (he’s walking the coastal route across northern Spain and will rejoin our route about 60K from Compestella). We all hugged goodbye.
This was an early start for us. The cobble roadway leads uphill from the river to an old gate which we stopped at for pictures for the start of our trail.
The goal for today was to make it to Orisson to give us an easy day to get reacclimated to hiking. As far as pilgrims go, we are carrying extremely heavy packs because almost everyone plans to spend every night in a refuge. I would guess the average pack weight to be around 10 pounds and we are weighing in close to 30.
The hike up to Orisson starts out relatively level but then quickly climbs to 1750m from our starting point of 175m. The pilgrims office told us to be sure to turn right onto the route de Napoleon and not take the bike route. We just followed the crowds out of town. We were quickly meeting people walking along the road with us. Lee and Sandy were from California in the Sacramento area. Georgie from Scotland who had spent time in Arizona. And a young German woman who was struggling a bit with bad blisters already and a pack that seemed too big for her–I don’t think she could cinch the waist belt up enough to get the weight off her shoulders.
After about 1.5 miles, we were still not climbing much so I was convinced that we had missed the turn. After a panicked conference in the road, Pam and I decided to turn back to get on the official route. George decided to go on. Lee and Sandy wavered, but Pam and I turned around. Less than 1/2 mile back, we ran into another group of hikers from England that convinced us that we were on the right track. We turned around to see Lee and Sandy walking our way. I motioned to them to turn back. I felt bad making them walk the extra distance.
Not too long after we turned back, the road started climbing steeply. By the time we caught back up with George, he had already gone another mile and climbed several hundred meters. He waited for us under a shady tree once he saw us behind him.
The rest of the way up wasn’t terrible, but definitely required effort. We made it to Orisson by 11:30. They were full. We had 2 choices: 1) catch a ride back down to St Jean to stay over night and get transported back up in the morning; or 2) push on. Pam wanted to push on, George said he’d try if we took a good break, and I definitely wanted to keep going.
We headed on about 12:30 after a baguette sandwich. We still had 600m to climb and another 11 miles to go. As we climbed, the views got better and the people got fewer. The afternoon climb was not as steep as the morning, but we were going slower because our adrenaline had run out. George really had his heart set on Orisson as the end of the day so he wasn’t prepared for this extra effort.
We made frequent stops to take off our shoes and cool off. Around 4 the cloud cover grew dense which was good, but the clouds were black, which was bad. We thought we might get lucky and have the storm pass us. For the most part it did settle in the adjacent valley, but we could still hear the thunder and it did rain on us.
By 5:30, we were finally heading down to Roncevaux, but what a hill! Apparently, switchbacks haven’t made it to northern Spain. This was tough going. The fear of falling was real for all of us. George was worried about his knees. Eventually, the the trail flattened out somewhat. We were the last ones to arrive in Roncevaux around 8:30.
When we approached the monastery, it appeared to be an abandoned building. The way around it is not well marked and we ended up entering the back door of the hostel. Once we got inside, we were amazed at the completely modern and newly finished interior. We got 3 beds on the top (3rd) floor. After dropping our packs and getting out of our boots, next order of business was food.
Some say I get cranky when I’m hungry. We tried going to a restaurant in the complex but it was only for hotel patrons and we were easily identified as pilgrims by our smell so we were asked to move on. The next restaurant was crowded and seemed to be overwhelmed by it. We couldn’t get served and we were getting concerned about being back in the dorms by 10p because they lock the doors. It was already 9.
We ended up eating out of the vending machines, but even that didn’t work out well because the one with dinners got jammed so only Pam could get a hot meal. We went to our beds and were just getting organized when the church bells started chiming 10. At the 10th bell, all the lights went out. They have a very strict lights/quiet hours policy from 10-6. I still took a shower to try and relax before I finally made it to bed by 10:30. George was still looking at stuff on his phone.